Jack and Jill Adopt

A Mommy Daddy Blog

April 13, 2007

Entitlement

Before I get into my post, I just have to share the good news. We're back in PGN! This happened much more quickly than I thought it would, so I'm happy!

Now about entitlement. One of the things I like to do during the difficult waiting period is read about adoption. I read parenting books and also memoirs and biographies. There are TONS of these books out there! I really like reading them because they reduce the seemingly endless process to a few hundred pages. It makes me feel that there is hope and Kit will be home soon!

Anyway, I was reading Two Little Girls: A Memoir of Adoption by Theresa Reid. I enjoyed the book, but there were some things that really bothered me. The main one was the author's sense of entitlement. I'm not talking about feeling entitled to raise and love your child, that is a necessary part of adoption. In this book, the author seemed to feel entitled to a child. She wrote as if the world owed her a child. And not just any child, a perfectly healthy little girl who looked just like her. She criticized her child's birth country and their adoption process. She seemed to feel that Ukraine should give her a child because they have children in need and she is a rich, successful American.

In my opinion, other countries do not owe Americans anything, least of all their most precious resource- children. We should feel privileged and lucky to be allowed to adopt a child from another country. As annoying and agonizing as the legal process can be, it is not our place to judge it. We are guests in this other country. They have the right to run their adoption process in the way they choose (if they have signed on to the Hague Treaty, they need to follow those guidelines but I don't want to get into that now).

3 Comments:

  • At 4/16/2007 11:36 PM, Blogger art-sweet said…

    Congrats on being back in PGN!

    Hope you're out for good soon!

     
  • At 4/17/2007 2:27 AM, Blogger erinberry said…

    Glad you're back in PGN!

    I struggle with the not-criticizing-the-government thing. I know where you're coming from, and I agree 100% that foreign countries have the right to make the process any way they want it. But I do believe that they should apply the same rules to everyone and make it fair. I also think that once two parties have entered a good faith agreement, it should be honored.

     
  • At 4/17/2007 5:13 PM, Blogger Jill said…

    Erinberry,
    I think you are exactly right. I was thinking about your terrible situation and struggling to think how to address that. But you're right, consistency is important.

     

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